Since I have had so many interesting discussions over the last couple of days. I thought I will put all my points in one place.
1. My Question to Arvind Kejriwal. Who is "civil society" and who appointed you to represent it.
I am sure Kejriwal has the best of intentions but I have seen him on TV shouting "civil society" and claiming to act on its behalf. To me this is a subversion of the democratic process. Candidates elected by a due process represent civil society, not self proclaimed individuals. Just because the credibility of one set of representatives is poor, the other set cannot usurp the process on basis of morality. They are wrong because if they seek decision making power, they have to join the heat and dust of elections. There is a brilliant piece on this by Ambedkar.
2. Lok Pal will not change the abuse of power by politicians.
The recent scams that were exposed were a combination of whistle blowers, RTI and action by Supreme Court (via PILs). This process needs to continue. We need many more people filing RTI and PILs. The problem is that the law enforcement and investigative bodies are not independent enough and the Lok Pal cannot solve this. The other huge problem is that elections are won on money power and hence politicians need money to get elected. This has to be fixed via police, electoral and judicial reforms.
3. The elite and middle class are participants and beneficiaries of a corrupt system.
Most business, and I know this for a fact, give bribes at various levels. They do this to pay less tax, get more business and abuse rights. From the tea vendor who employs underage children to the big corporate that pay crores to corner national resources, everyone is involved. The salaried class that is involved too. If a salaried manager is on target to achieve x results and if the target is too ambitious, most likely that person will do "whatever" it takes to get the result. To overcome the moral discomfort, they blame the "system" and use euphemisms like "manage" instead of bribe. Ambitious people - business owners or salaried managers - bend laws to reach their goal without fear of punishment.
4. The "rang-de-basanti" crowd if fickle and represents only 0.1%.
I really hope to be proved wrong on this one and this is not a culmination of some World Cup euphoria. But the media and celebrity circus around this has credibility that is only a fraction more than the politicians. For many of them its an opportunity to grab some more lime light by becoming "experts" on TV. None of them can come close to winning an election.
5. The positivity is a good sign.
The only good part about this campaign that it has a lot of positive energy. It is ideology based and also a non violent movement. This is truly India's first Facebook movement. The upper-middle class has reached a critical number to be counted and they have found the tools to get connected too. I hope this results in more local engagement, volunteerism and giving.
1. My Question to Arvind Kejriwal. Who is "civil society" and who appointed you to represent it.
I am sure Kejriwal has the best of intentions but I have seen him on TV shouting "civil society" and claiming to act on its behalf. To me this is a subversion of the democratic process. Candidates elected by a due process represent civil society, not self proclaimed individuals. Just because the credibility of one set of representatives is poor, the other set cannot usurp the process on basis of morality. They are wrong because if they seek decision making power, they have to join the heat and dust of elections. There is a brilliant piece on this by Ambedkar.
2. Lok Pal will not change the abuse of power by politicians.
The recent scams that were exposed were a combination of whistle blowers, RTI and action by Supreme Court (via PILs). This process needs to continue. We need many more people filing RTI and PILs. The problem is that the law enforcement and investigative bodies are not independent enough and the Lok Pal cannot solve this. The other huge problem is that elections are won on money power and hence politicians need money to get elected. This has to be fixed via police, electoral and judicial reforms.
3. The elite and middle class are participants and beneficiaries of a corrupt system.
Most business, and I know this for a fact, give bribes at various levels. They do this to pay less tax, get more business and abuse rights. From the tea vendor who employs underage children to the big corporate that pay crores to corner national resources, everyone is involved. The salaried class that is involved too. If a salaried manager is on target to achieve x results and if the target is too ambitious, most likely that person will do "whatever" it takes to get the result. To overcome the moral discomfort, they blame the "system" and use euphemisms like "manage" instead of bribe. Ambitious people - business owners or salaried managers - bend laws to reach their goal without fear of punishment.
4. The "rang-de-basanti" crowd if fickle and represents only 0.1%.
I really hope to be proved wrong on this one and this is not a culmination of some World Cup euphoria. But the media and celebrity circus around this has credibility that is only a fraction more than the politicians. For many of them its an opportunity to grab some more lime light by becoming "experts" on TV. None of them can come close to winning an election.
5. The positivity is a good sign.
The only good part about this campaign that it has a lot of positive energy. It is ideology based and also a non violent movement. This is truly India's first Facebook movement. The upper-middle class has reached a critical number to be counted and they have found the tools to get connected too. I hope this results in more local engagement, volunteerism and giving.
4 comments:
After reading your post some thoughts came to mind. While writing, I realized that comment became too lengthy so I am posting it on my blog. http://my-abstractlife.blogspot.com/2011/04/my-counter-thoughts-on-rushabhs.html
I have made a separate blog post to add link to all the site related to police and judicial and electoral reform
http://lokpalbilldebates.blogspot.com/2011/04/debates-and-thoughts-on-anna-hazare.html
Purging the system has been stalled on all sides for several years :)
Bribes - the most rampant forms of corruption that most people have encountered is basically rent seeking. People responsible for dispensing public services seek rent where they have no right to. There are two things that need to be done:
1. Improve the process/system so that the opportunity to seek rent is less. This might include making the system more transparent (RTI petitions), making it more automated etc.
2. Make enforcement system better so that the dis-incentives are larger for both bribe takers and payers. To make this possible our current enforcement system (police+judiciary) needs to be cleaned up - which is easier said than done. But the Jan Lokpal bill tries to install another system just because the current one is dysfunctional. I don't see how that solves the problem.
I completely supported the RTI campaign because that was really a good bill and very badly needed. This time, not so much.
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